Gurley: 'Late stage' is just a euphemism for big checks
Bill Gurley · The Gift and The Curse of Staying Private with Bill Gurley · Invest Like The Best · Jun 10, 2025 · at 4:04
Bill Gurley discusses the blurring distinction between early-stage and late-stage venture capital in the AI era.
0:00 / 0:13exact quote · 13.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“I've always thought late stage was a euphemism for big check, you know, because you, if there are people willing to put three hundred million in an AI company that's 12 months old. Right. So that's not late stage. It's just big check.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Bill Gurley
Gurley: Endowment VC Managers Are Bonused on Paper Marks
“But the thing people may not realize is the managers of the VC group at the large endowments have no incentive to try and right size this number. In fact, many of them are bonused on paper marks. And so, if anything, they have the reverse incentives to get the…”
Gurley: Copying David Swensen's 50% illiquid Yale model broke LP liquidity
“I would suggest that what we might be seeing is the exact result of everyone copying the Yale model. You know, Howard Marks famously said, you make a lot of money when you do something non-consensus and accurate. But what if everyone copies David Swenson? What…”
Gurley: Putting retail IRAs into 2-and-20 venture funds will increase fraud
“If we move to a world where, you know, the answer to getting the everyday consumer into high growth tech is to put their, you know, endowments, for one case, IRAs into, you know, these venture funds that are charging two and 20. I just think there's more obfus…”
Gurley: Investors are repeating ZIRP-era mistakes with AI startups
“All of the problems we talked about that created the zombie unicorns. We're just rerunning that. Like there was this maybe part of not living through a correction, but like we're funding these AI companies, the exact way we funded those companies.”
Mega-check VCs act as uncritical friends instead of providing oversight
“One, another negative element of all the systems issues that we're talking about is the firms that, that, that beg their way onto the cap chart by writing a. Three hundred million dollar check or whatever. They differentiate themselves by being the best friend…”
Gurley: Believing You Cannot Overpay Is Rational If Assuming Meta-Like Scale
“People that have watched Google or Meta, you know, go from Looking expensive at twelve billion to three trillion. Like, if they assume something might be that, they can't overpay in their mind. Which I think is rational for the independent player.”